I was so focused on including my first cultural impressions in my last post that I completely forgot to mention one of my favorite points in my time here so far. As I was deciding where I wanted to spend my time abroad, I took sports culture heavily into account. I love watching and playing sports, and I had always wanted to experience watching a Japanese baseball game. As a result, I knew that that would be near the top of my list of things to do whilst here.
Unfortunately, as I do with many things, I procrastinated a bit in purchasing my ticket to watch the local team, the Hanshin Tigers, play. I hadn’t thought about it for a while, until a fellow classmate reminded me that the season was ending. Boy was I lucky, because that night I managed to purchase one of the final tickets available for the final home game. Of course I ended up paying more than I would have had I bought the ticket earlier, but I knew that this was something I really wanted to experience.
This was my first solo adventure of the semester, although being alone took nothing away from how interesting the experience was. I follow Major League Baseball somewhat and attend 1-2 Texas Rangers games a year. As a result, I am very aware of the issues the MLB is experiencing concerning game length and entertainment level. After seeing a game in Japan, I really think the MLB could learn a lot from professional baseball in Japan. Instead of casually watching a 4-hour baseball game and cheering every once in a while like in the US, the section I sat in provided an energetic, engaging fan experience. Chants, songs, noise makers, trumpets, and drums made every moment of the game fun and exciting. Not only that, but the game was considerably shorter due to less time between pitches and innings (although the latter could be due to shorter/less frequent TV commercial breaks; I need to research this a bit). All in all, it was amazing to see although baseball is an American game, Japanese culture has completely changed (and in my opinion improved) the experience of pro baseball.